Barry LaBov on The Differentiation Secret That Built Harley-Davidson

Today's special guest is Barry Lebow. I hope you enjoy the episode. Barry, a huge welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast.

Thank you, James. I love your show. I'm ready to get going. I'm excited.

Look, I'm very excited because there's a lot of people and companies fighting for market share, fighting to stand out. And it's a tough time for a lot of people right now. Economic recession, lots of global things going on. But at the end of the day, no matter what's going on, I firmly believe there are always winners. There are always people who still make the sale, always people who still move forward. So we're here to talk about the power of differentiation, and that's the title of your recent book. We will put a link in the show notes to that. But to get started, I'd like to kind of go very tactical when we think of personal branding. What's the biggest myth about personal branding?

I think the biggest myth, and this has to do with product and brand branding as well as personal, is that if you have a brand, that means you must be superior, where you're unique and different. And it's not superiority, it's distinctiveness. It's what you stand for. Now, others may find it very attractive. Some may go, no, I don't care about that. That's okay. You don't want to be all things to all people. You want to be able to be exactly who you are and be able to state it with pride, with honor. And you know what, those individuals, or could be companies that go, you know what? I love that. That's your audience, not everybody else.

I like that. And so if someone, say, only had 30 seconds to express their personal brand, what should they say or what should.

They show they need to talk about in that very short period of time? Something that's special, something that doesn't sound like everybody else. So get rid of some of those terrible words that we use like value, selection, price. Get rid of those words. Get rid of words like local, friendly, happy. Forget those things. Talk about what you do and why. You know, I've been. For instance, I met somebody and he ran an ambulance company. And originally his personal brand was, yeah, I run an ambulance company and I have 300 employees and a bunch of really cool equipment. And it's like, well, nobody cares. But when he worked on his personal brand, he said, look, I am a former firefighter and an emt, a medical technician, and I worked with my best friend 30 years ago to create a company that we thought would be able to build the safest ambulances in the world. Ambulances that will save people. That's what we're all about.

Now, I am listening right now.

You're going, okay, so this guy did it for this reason. It's cool. It's got a purpose. There's a meaning. He has significance. That's what we have to focus on.

Because people are not going to sit up and listen or watch if it doesn't matter to them, if it doesn't excite them or challenge them.

Right? You think about it. You were talking about economic challenges. Think of all the technological challenges. If we don't realize that the world wants us to be commoditized, and if we don't get that, we're making a big mistake. The world wants us to look like everyone else so that we can be cheaper than everyone else. Right? Well, the whole point is express what you do. The one or two, maybe three things that make you unique, not 600. And you know what? Let the chips fall where they may. It may not resonate with some people and other people. It's going to be magic.

And what I'm hearing is you don't want to try and resonate with everyone. You literally want to try and resonate with your ideal client.

Right. You know, so many of us. And I was guilty of this. When I started my company, I felt like every morning I'd get up and I had to make 8,000 sales, and I had to keep going, go, go, go, go, go. And then one day I realized I was exhausted. I realized I was trying to say anything and do anything to get a sale, and I had to stop. And I went, I don't want 8,000 sales. I'd like one, you know, maybe two. That'd be great. And it dawned on me that I needed to be able to express who and what I am so that I could wake up in the morning and feel very natural about it, as opposed to going, now, wait a minute. I have to promise I can do this. My competition says they'll do that. Okay, well, I got to be able to do. I don't know how I'm going to do it. No, we have to start from a position of strength, and each of us has something unique. Each of our companies. You know, James, I've worked with companies that have been in business for 100 years. Some have been in business for 200 years. And they have said to me, you know, we don't do anything unique. There's nothing we do that's any good. And I'm going, wait a minute, you were in business for the last hundred and some years, you've got to be doing something. And all of a sudden they're going, yeah, you're right. We, we must be doing something. And that's the way it is with us as individuals. So personal branding, there's got to be a reason that your 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 clients really like working with you. They trust you, or reasons that you have certain friends who say, oh, my gosh, I love what you do, I love the way you are. That is really getting to the heart of what makes you unique. Or you could call it your differentiation.

I love that, Barry. And so you've worked with the likes of Harley Davidson, Audi, some of the big players. We're going to talk about that kind of organizational differentiation in a minute. In terms of personal branding, that uniqueness, if there was something we could do to try and uncover our differentiation, our uniqueness, what's the starting point? Have you got a few tools where people are like, I don't know, I'm a this, I'm a that, I do this. How do we uncover what our uniqueness is?

Well, I have one secret I'll share with the audience, and that is ask people what they think you should never change. You know, there's a lot of things I do, and I do this and that, and I go, yeah, yeah. What should I never, ever, ever stop doing or never ever change and then you'll find out. I worked with a young man, a really good friend of mine, and he's a programmer. He's a computer programmer. And he said, you, I'm trying to get a job. And I don't know, I don't know. There's so many better programmers than me. And I said to him, I said, but I've known you for all these years. There's one thing you should never stop doing. And he said, what's that? I said, you love to work with people. You're that rare technical programmer who loves to get people together. And he goes, oh, yeah, I know. I love it. People tell me I should never, ever change it. I go, that should be on your resume. That should be one of the first sentences out of your mouth when you're talking to people. I am the type of programmer that actually loves to bring people together.

That's what we have to look at. What is it, James, that people say, never, ever change? This, James, you are awesome in this way. Don't change, stay this way. There are other things you can change, but never Ever veer away from that and find out what it is, everybody and. And by the way, it might be two things, maybe one or two things, but all of a sudden, there's a couple things here that are important. Number one, you find out what people think you really do well. Okay. Number two, you also realize you should never change it. And if you change it, you're not that special. So honor it, hold onto it, and celebrate it.

That's beautiful. And that's something we can all do. And what I'm hearing is actively go out and seek some input, ask for people's feedback. What is it that I should never change?

That's exactly right. We're so accustomed to, we have a competitor and they're doing this and that. We go, I can do that. And then you have another competitor doing something. Well, I can do that. Yeah, you can do it. You probably can't do it as well. You can't do it as cheap. And you're going to stop doing the one or two things that they can't do because you're focusing on what they do. So focus on those few things you do that are great. And they don't have to be just giant differences. They have to be who you are, and they have to be sincere and.

Authentic and do less things, but do more of those things.

Right. That's what. That's why people are with you. That's why they stay married to you. That's why they stay friends with you. That's why they stay as clients or suppliers or whatever with you.

Incredible. And what kills a personal brand faster than anything.

You know, the opposite of what we're talking about. Trying to be so many things. Trying to say yes every single time when somebody says, can you do? Yep. Have you ever done. Yeah. Are you able to do? Yeah. It's so powerful to admit you have limitations, because when you do that, you're also really observing the fact that you have strengths. So don't try to be like everybody else. Don't dumb down what makes what you are special. I had a client that had a really brilliant product, and they thought that they could dumb it down, make it cheaper, sell a lot more of them. So they tried to do that, and they lost almost all their business because their customers loved it the way it was. And then all of a sudden it was like, well, they're like everybody else. But here's the point, James. Everybody else knows how to do it better doing that way than you do. You know how to do it your way the best. So stay True to yourself. Don't try to imitate.

Yeah, beautiful and interesting. I have a lot of guests. Come on. We talk about AI and some real leading experts from Google and other places that are developing AI at speed. And I understand it's something we're all starting to embrace, some more than others. We're going to be able to imitate faster than anything and iterate. But what do you think we should be doing as personal brands in this time of digital transformation? What can help us to stay the course and be relevant?

We have to make sure that technology serves us and that we're not serving technology. Meaning if we're talking about personal brand and you're putting something out on social media and it's something you just ask AI to do, it spits it out and there you go. You have now violated your personal brand. It needs to be your voice, your words. So, yes, use AI. Have AI come up with some ideas, that's great, but make sure those are the words you would use, that those are the concepts you would talk about, that that's the way you would phrase something. It's got the sound and be you. So use it, but don't be lazy and just have whatever AI does spit it out. I mean, we've all seen LinkedIn posts, social media posts, emails that you go, oh my gosh, AI wrote this thing. Yeah, we don't want that.

Yeah, we want genuine human created things, products, words, books. You know, I've seen people are creating books in, you know, two days, Right? Like what? I don't ever personally, I don't ever want to read an AI generated book. I want to read a book that's been generated by and written by a human. And maybe AI informed the research.

But yeah, Well, a great example, I know a, a person who does audio books. He's a recording engineer and one of his things that he says don't do, he says, don't have AI read your book. I mean, think about somebody writes a book and you go, hey, you know what? I can get AI to read this. Okay, well, you have now completely destroyed the authenticity because you have an AI voice speaking on your behalf. You know, even if you clear your throat or you mumble a word or you're a little slow in your diction, at least it's coming from you. And we, as humans, we can detect that sincerity, that humanity, and that's something we have to protect.

I agree. And again, I'm in the podcast world, obviously, and some of the fastest growing podcasts are fully AI generated AI Hosts, AI guests. It's mind blowing. And I mean, they're hitting top of the charts consistently. That really doesn't sit well with me. And I know I could jump on board and start doing that myself, but part of it's like, I want to chat to Barry, and I want Barry and I to chat back and forth, and I don't want Barry's AI bot talking to my AI bot. I want us to have a genuine conversation. And I think that listeners will still want that. They don't want this AI generated hyperbole. Yeah.

I think that with technology, I've been around long enough that I think it would be accurate to say that obviously AI is an amazing technology, but just like many, many years ago, when all of a sudden you didn't have to play a musical instrument very accurately, you could plug it into a computer, and the computer would correct your mistakes and correct when you were offbeat, things like this. And then it went into the art world where all of a sudden, you know, you're not having to really draw something. You're using the technology to do it for you. All those things scared us because we thought, okay, our jobs are over. Well, things did change, and some jobs were eliminated because you can do mediocrity really quick with technology, all right? You can't really do the artistry like you can with humans. You can't do that. But I think the best thing and most helpful thing that I have really picked up is, hey, let's really respect the power of this. Let's utilize it for the right reasons, and let's not give up our ownership of who our voice is. You know, you've talked about personal brand. If you give up the ownership of your voice because you just feel like using AI, you have no valid personal brand.

It's interesting, I think, from, like, just what I'm seeing in the world. Personal brand has more sway and influence than organizational brand. For example, Richard Branson has way more followers, engaged followers, than Virgin. Elon Musk has way more engaged followers than Tesla or SpaceX. Same can be said for so many others. So people want to do business and connect with personal people. So when I think of the two biggest personal brands on the planet, that almost in any country, people will be like, oh, yeah, I know that face. You've got Dwayne the Rock Johnson and you've got Donald Trump. I mean, love them or loathe them, these two individuals are arguably the biggest personal brands out there. There's plenty of others, but they really stand out in my Mind, what have they done in terms of the power of differentiation when you observe them from the outside, either one of those, what is it that they've done to really stand out?

If you look at Donald Trump, whether you like him or loathe him.

His brand is, here's where I stand. This is what I'm going to do, and I'm going to go do it. And whether you like it or not, you have to say, okay, that's a very predictable brand. He's not a brand where one minute he's going down one path and another minute he's going the opposite, to go catch some sort of public opinion. So I give credit to anybody, no matter what their political position is. When they have a position, they say, this is what I'm going to do, and they go do it. I think sometimes we confuse that with, well, I don't like what he did, so I hate him. Well, okay, you can hate what he did, but if he said he's doing these things and he's doing them, that is why, again, it might only be 52%, but 52% of the people support that. And you know what? That's all you need when you're running for office. Actors and actresses, similarly, sometimes the actors and actresses step over the line because they think people like us want to know what their political opinions are and their personal opinions. And what really happens is often we are not too excited because they tarnish their image, because they step past where they're doing the things we love. You know, if somebody's a great singer, I want to hear her say, do I want to hear about her position on a particular issue? Maybe not. So I think that's what differentiation is about. Somebody who is a magnificent performer, and that's what their brand is about. You know what? That's what we want them to do. That's what we would say, never stop doing that. But some of that other stuff, you know, your political stuff and what football team or baseball team you like, I don't need to hear it. So I think we have to realize, you know, there are only a few things that people really think we do well, and we should stick to those.

Absolutely. And if we think now and we shift gears a little bit and we go to, like, an organization, we look at, say, Harley Davidson or Audi. Two of the big ones you've worked with.

Sure, yeah.

How did you help them figure out what their differentiation was with Ali?

One of the things that was interesting was we. We got involved with them and they were having trouble in their sales of the product yet, they had a differentiating technology called Quattro. And Quattro was their all wheel drive. And I won't go into great detail, but nobody in the world had that. They had all wheel drive out there, but not like Quattro. It really was pretty amazing. The point was, though, it wasn't promoted, it wasn't shared. So that if you went to a dealership and you said, hey, do you have all wheel drive? Until we helped the salespeople with this, they would say, yeah, we have all wheel drive. And they go, okay, well, I can go buy a Volvo. I can go buy a Buick with all wheel drive. And people would walk out. After we helped the enterprise understand the genius that their engineers had created in Quattro, we trained their sales force. So somebody walking in goes, hey, do you have all wheel drive? Well, we have Quattro. And if somebody said, yeah, yeah, I'll just. I'm just going to look for all wheel. Okay, here's what makes Quattro different. If you find it of value, we are the only company that has it. So we helped the organization realize the brilliance that was right in front of them. Which, by the way, James, is what I do for a living. I don't come up and create their uniqueness. I, I discover it. That's what we do. We look for that with Harley Davidson. Harley is an amazing company. They are the epitome of differentiation in that if you ask them, gee, are you the superior motorcycle in every way, shape and form? They would go, no. There are some that are faster, some that are cheaper, some that are cheaper to maintain. So wait a minute. What is it that makes them unique? Well, one of the differentiators that Harley has is that when you buy a Harley, you join a brotherhood or sisterhood. You're part of that family. They have a club called Hog. Hog or Harley Owner Group. Now, this Harley Owner group is worldwide. And when you join, you are invited in and you start to participate with others who love their bike. Just like you think about this. It's an amazingly brilliant thing. So one of the unique things we did is work with Harley to help inspire their employees, the people that represent their product, to help promote Hog.

Amazing. So you help people to really discover or uncover what's already there, their uniqueness. Right? And then you talk about. You go and you help their employees to really embed that. So what does that look like? When you walk into a company and you help them and their companies buy in and believe, how do you go about Doing that.

That's a great question. Because this touches a nerve that is so important, and that is so. Often we identify what is unique. Okay, let's say somebody out there listening, okay, I know what we do that's unique. And you know what we do? We start to launch it to the world. We tell the world. But we forget to celebrate it first with the most important people. The people that build it, the people that designed it, the people that manufacture it, the people that sell it, the people that service it. We forget them. They're the most important people to launch your new product or to relaunch your brand with. So what we will do is we will, after we do this discovery, James, we let our clients know that, look, we have a step that nobody else has. It's a differentiation of our company, and that is we launch it internally, we celebrate it. And here's one beautiful, inspiring secret about this. It's so important to do this because it gives people a sense of significance, of meaning. It's like, we're doing this. We've created such and such. And you know what? Nobody in the world does exactly what we do. And whether you're the person cleaning the floors here, or you're the person designing this product or this technology, you're all playing a role because we're making the world a better place.

And.

And you are playing a phenomenally important role. And we're celebrating this now. Soon we're going to launch it to the rest of the world. And we want you to be that army that's able to express what it is to share it and to help us grow our business. That's what we do. So that is part of. And it's a very inspiring part of how we work with a client.

I love that. And when you're getting people, say their employees out of their heads and into their hearts, what do you use to do that? Is it storytelling? You know, how do you go about that?

Well, it is storytelling. I'll give you a story right here. I walked through an ambulance factory in the United States, and there was a young man, and this is a great example. I said, hey, what do you do? And he said, well, I plug in wire harnesses. I said, okay. I said, so what else? He goes, I'm going to leave. I'm going to go down the street to a factory and make 25 cents more an hour. And I said, oh. I said, well, before you leave, how many years do these ambulances last? And he said, oh, about 10 years. And I said, now, in that 10 year period, there are about 100,000 people inside that ambulance. It could be the technician, the driver, could have been a medical person, it could be the patient, the patient's families. I mean, it adds up to about 100,000 people. And I said, you know what, in that 10 year period, each one of these ambulances will protect the life or maybe once in a while save the life of these people. And he looked at me and he.

Said.

I never thought I was in the life saving business. I thought I was in the wire harness business.

You know what, I think he's in the life saving business and that's what we have to realize. And I hope this touches a chord with people. If he believes he's in the life saving business, which I think he is, that means he'll probably plug those harnesses in well. So, okay, quality control goes up, right? Good quality. He'll probably make sure the people around him are doing their job because when he gets to his station he's going to say, hey people, we're saving lives here. Let's make sure we got this thing right. The other thing is he'll probably stay on that job longer because you know what, he's the life saving guy. He's making a difference and he'll invite his friends in. It's so smart and it's so human to let the people know that hey, we're not just a same old, same old company. We're doing something special. We're doing something that nobody else is quite doing and we are appreciative of, of what you're doing. So thank you. Now, James, to me, if I'm hearing that and I'm an employee, I'm going, I love it, I love it. And sign me up. I want to tell the world everything we're doing.

Yeah, that's when you think about that, it's common sense, but it's not always common practice. And I think taking the time to reinforce, what is it we do, why do we do it, what difference do we make? That's going to really increase engagement, probably increase retention of your greatest people.

It's also, and this should be good to any business person out there, it's the cheapest sort of promotion you can do because it's your own employees. You're not buying ads, you're not spending a lavish amount of money, but these are the people that are going to talk to thousands and thousands and thousands of others. It's, it's smart, it's economical, you know, and it helps in retention, quality, all of that it's the right thing to do 100%.

And when you think about brands, so let's say they're going to launch a book, tech product, a new car, whatever it might be. When it comes to a great brand activation plan, you know, what's something that can actually influence and shape customer behavior? What have you seen that's worked really well?

I think one thing we have to realize is that the experience that the customer receives is your brand. So you can have a great product. And I don't care if you have a 12 person company or a 40,000 person company, if that customer receives an experience in buying your product or looking at your product or considering it, they receive an experience that they feel is really disappointing, is really negative. They will not only be unhappy with that experience, but they will not buy your product and they will tell other people not to buy your product. So you have to realize your experience is your brand in the eyes and the hearts of your customers.

So keep that front and center no matter what you're doing.

Right. You know, if you go to a car dealership, you talked about Audi. If you go to a car dealership and you're all excited about buying this one car and you saw an advertisement on TV and on social media and you're so excited and you go in and let's say the salesperson there treats you terribly and someone else doesn't even want to talk to you, and you walk out of there, you don't say, hey, you know what, I want to buy that car, but I won't buy it at this dealership. You don't, you walk out, you go, I'll never buy a car that's this brand again. I will never buy this brand again. And it's because we connect that and it's so important for our audience to understand that it's human nature. Whoever talked to me is your brand. Whatever building I went to, if it's beautiful or dilapidated, it's your brand. And that's what we have to realize.

Yeah, it's everywhere and it's everything. It's interesting. Last night for my roundtable Mastermind, I had the world's leading expert in energy. He wrote a book called Energize. I think you would love it. And I'm fascinated by energy. And in your book you talk about specifically brand energy. And I think of leaders. How can they measure or sense when their internal culture is losing energy?

You can feel it and you can see it in the people. Because we alluded a little earlier, James but is retention poor? Is it really tough to hire somebody good? Is quality control poor? Where people that should know better are just letting things go out the door? If these things are happening, the energy level around your brand is dwindling. And that's because your brand and what you're doing is not important enough to human beings at this moment for them to care. And it's also not important enough or unique enough in their eyes because they're thinking, you know, I can leave this place and I go somebody somewhere else if I want to. You know, just like 50 million people in 2021 during COVID walked off their jobs in the United States alone. They just thought, hey, I don't want to work here anymore. All right, 50 million people. Well, that helped inspire my book because I thought, you know, it's not just differentiating your product to sell more of it. It's different. Differentiating your product and your brand to inspire your people, to motivate them, to stay, to make them proud. And that's what we have to realize. If we're seeing any of the signs of that I just mentioned, where it is obvious that there is not a real good understanding of what we're doing and why it's important and the role each of our people play, then we have work to do.

And the thing is, you've got a roadmap for that work, and that roadmap is your book. So I'm going to make a link as well in the show notes and remind everyone, please go and get a copy of that book. Now, if you had to boil it down, what's the one habit leaders need to adopt if they want to build a brand that's loved inside and out.

I'll give you one secret, and here it is. That is don't wait for the employee annual meeting. Don't wait for the quarterly picnic. Don't wait for the once every six months newsletter you send out to employees to share what we're doing every day, whether you're meeting with one person, two people, 20,000 people, is a day that you need to make sure that you are reinforcing what makes what you're doing and what your employees are involved with unique, distinct, important. Now if you go, oh my gosh, that's a lot of work to do. It is, it's called leadership. And you have to literally be, as they would say, a broken record, repeating this even to the point where you're tired of it. But people aren't going to get that tired of hearing, hey, you're really Making a big difference. I'm proud of what you're doing. We are doing such and such and nobody else does it. So use every day as a platform to reinforce the significance and the uniqueness of what you do and your brand.

Beautiful. And that's inside. What about externally? So in terms of someone coming up to a big launch of something new, it's not yet out and they're in that kind of pre launch phase, can they overdo the messaging or is there a rhythm that you think they should hit? In terms of this is what we're excited about, this is what we're trying to do?

Yes. I think we start very logically with who do we want to share the word with? So we mentioned we start with our employees first. Well, who would be next? Well, maybe our loyal customers. Maybe we bring them together as we're launching or relaunching and we say, you know what? Before everyone else hears about this, we want you here, we want you to share in this. What we have to keep in mind is again, we can't be all things to all people. But those customers who for some reason really like us, they need to be given that sense of significance too. They need to help celebrate with us and become that army of enthusiasts.

I love that. And that's about staying connected, staying aware. I love it right now, Bar. It's amazing how you look at the world and the way you distill it because it seems complex from the outside. But once we start chatting and what you're saying is totally on point and I feel like small businesses, personal brands, right up to corporates, could actually really run with a lot of these principles and make a big difference very quickly.

You can. I run a small business by nature. I don't want a large company. We follow all of this and it means I have to be a cheerleader, but I'm happy being a cheerleader whether you're a small company or a large company. And I'll stress one more time, I probably haven't stressed it enough. I don't want people to get done listening and watching today and think I've got to go create something that's unique and different. No, I want you to not do that. I want you to identify, to discover what you're already doing that is already unique and special. Because guess what, that's really easy to replicate because you've been doing it.

Yeah, there's no kind of energy required for that. It's already there.

That's awesome. Now Barry, before we wrap up one, I'm going to put all of your socials in the show notes so people can connect in with you. But last question I'd really love to ask you is if you and I were to fast forward many years into the future and you were highly aware that it was your very last day on earth and someone young came into the room that you really loved dearly and they said, barry, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What might you say to them?

I'd say, be true to yourself. Be easy on yourself. Don't beat yourself up because you're different or you're not like somebody else. Instead, honor and celebrate who you are and be courageous enough to realize it will not be enough for some people, but for the right people, it'll be more than enough.

Beautiful. Such a great message. It really lands powerfully. And be true to yourself. And I guess what I hear from today as well, when you say you're going to do something, actually do it. Stick to it, Follow through.

Yeah, do it. Even if people are irritated because.

What will happen is they may say, look, I hate that so and so did this. But he. She did say they were going to do it, so at least they're a person of their word. You know What? That's really good.

100%. And that can only help brand.

Yeah, I love it. Well, Barry, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. Thanks for putting your book out into the world, the Power of Differentiation. I can't wait for people to read it and apply it.

James, thank you for your constant, positive and productive message about living a life on purpose, with purpose. So I appreciate that as well.

Thanks so much. I look forward to connecting again soon.

Me too.

Cheers, Barry.